Category Archives: Early Retirement

09.29.13
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A Quarter Century is a Long Time

An increasingly unusual part of my career was that I spent 25 years at one company.  By and large, people just don’t stay at one job that long anymore.  When the executive assistant who was organizing my office-wide retirement reception was putting together the email invite, she quizzed me about what life was like at my company 25 years ago when I was hired in April 1988.  As I described to her the working environment — no desktop computers, no email, no voice mail, no cell phones, letters typed in triplicate with carbon copies on typewriters, it made me realize how much has happened, both in the world and in my personal life, in 25 years.

When the email invite went out describing the primitive conditions of my early days, it sounded like I was some creature from the Cretaceous Period, or that we sat around throwing coal on the fire during the cold winter months.   Case in point, the summer intern in our department is 20 years old, which meant that she was BORN five years AFTER I started at the company.  And just to rub things in, she told me all about a cruise she was going on to celebrate her mother’s 50th birthday.  After putting this all in context,  it was horrifying to realize that the intern’s MOTHER is younger than me….and that she and many of the analysts in our office missed, for example, the entire disco era.

Just for fun, and to embrace my artifact-ness, I decided to do some research on the internet (which also wasn’t around when I started) to see what was happening in early 1988:

  • Ronald Reagan was President. Since then, we’ve had 4 more presidents, 3 of them 2-term Presidents
  • In 1988, the average cost of a new home was $91,000, new car $10,400, gas 91¢/gallon, movie tickets $3.50, postage stamp 24¢, The Cosby Show (TV) and The Rain Man (movie) were most popular that year.
  • For Sports Fans: the Dodgers won the World Series that year and the Lakers won the NBA title (it was a good year for LA fans).  [Maybe the Dodgers will do it again this year?!] Since then, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls won 6 championships, and Kobe and the Lakers won 5 championships
  • Some of the world events and inventions that occurred during my corporate career:
Break-up of USSR Rodney King riots World Wide Web Cell phones
Tiananmen Square Space shuttle Columbia disaster Digital Cameras iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad
3 wars: Gulf War in Kuwait, War in Iraq, War in Afghanistan 9/11Hurricane Katrina TVO, HDTV WiFi
Northridge Quake Great Recession Google Maps/GPS Laser Eye Surgery

Not to mention all that happened to me personally in 25 years.  My husband and I got married two months after my hire date.  My son was born my fourth year and he’s now almost 21 and halfway through college.   All four of our parents and my stepson passed away. I broke my foot TWICE.  I learned the Macarena (not related to the broken foot). I had been an employee of my company almost half my life.  This was the period when almost every major event of my adult life took place, and when some of my greatest achievements, happiness, sadness and disappointments occurred.

Its almost scary how fast time flew by…and sobering to realize that I may only have one more 25-year chunk left.  That’s why I am trying to be purposeful and conscientious about the choices I make, and how I spend my time these next 25 years.  But not so conscientious that I don’t take risks and occasionally throw caution to the wind.  After all, unlike my retirement celebrations, my next “funeral “ will be the real one…and I won’t be there to hear what people say about me. J

09.22.13
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Good Grief – Reflections on the Process of Leaving

I’m really glad I had a proper burial at work.  I say that because the whole process felt like a strange mix of birthday and funeral.   When I made the final decision to retire, I did a fair amount of thinking as to how much notice I should give.   Since my 55th birthday was in August 2013 (at which time I qualified for Early Retirement) my primary exit strategy was to wait until my 2012 bonus was safely in my bank account, wait a few more weeks for the optics, and then give notice.   There wasn’t a great deal of precedence for the proper protocols…. in recent years, not many people stuck around until retirement age.  Or if they did, we were increasingly receiving curt emails that read “We thank John Smith for his 30 years of service.  His last day is tomorrow and we wish him well.”

AngelWings-Betsy-Quyn-John-Mel

A picture taken on one of my last workdays of me and my closest work colleagues by some artwork outside our office. In hindsight, it would have made a great photo for my workplace “Funeral” program – depicting my ascension into retirement!

So, I figured four months should be more than enough.  That way, the company would have some time to decide how to replace me, and I could offer to participate in the hiring or training process for my replacement.  When I first gave notice, I was pretty burned out and disillusioned and I wanted nothing more than to walk or run quickly from the building in the cover of night. What I didn’t foresee was what a fun chapter that last four months would prove to be.

Over the course of my last months, I sometimes wished I had given less notice. Some days just seemed to drag on, and nobody seemed to be in much hurry to make decisions about how to replace me.    I contended daily with the 5 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance, depression and acceptance).   Not me, mind you –  I was alive and well and smiling ear to ear, and yet everyone around me was mourning my loss, and different people were in different stages on different days.  And then the politics and  jockeying for my leadership role began.  It was exhausting. And more than a little weird.

On the other hand, I felt liberated once I no longer had financial goals to worry about.  The job wasn’t so bad when I could spend my time doing more of the things I liked about work without worrying incessantly about my daily/weekly/monthly results and those of everyone who reported to me.  It gave me time to coach and mentor and check in with people (both clients and colleagues) I hadn’t had much time to talk to.  I even helped sell a couple of big projects the last month before I left!   I began spending more time with my friends and activities outside of work, no longer had that low-level work 24/7 anxiety, and was delighted to see my energy and humor come roaring back.  Friends started commenting that I already looked years younger!

And then came August, which, between my birthday and retirement, morphed into one long party.   I was getting calls, emails, and cards from clients and colleagues wishing me well in retirement.  I actually found myself a little over-stimulated (and having trouble sleeping) by all the excitement.  I kept expecting my own grief to kick in once I had to confront actually saying good-bye to colleagues I’d worked with for so long,

I had several retirement celebrations (official and unofficial) and I was surprisingly and genuinely happy at each of them.   It was a little like being at my own funeral and getting to hear the nice things people said about me.  Plus, I realized that I had made some really good friends that would carry over into my retirement life, so I wasn’t that sad about saying good-bye.  And I certainly wasn’t going to miss the job itself.

Most importantly, those four months gave me the chance to honor and appreciate the parts of my job, my company and my colleagues that I really loved and cherished.  So, on August 15, when I walked out the door, that spirit of disillusionment and burnout had been replaced by a spirit of gratitude and pride.  I know that, in corporate America today, few workers get the “gold watch” retirement send-off anymore.  Mine was pure gold, and for that I’ll be forever thankful.

09.05.13
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The Great Experiment: Early Retirement…….or Now What?!

Since I am looking at this first year of retirement as a science experiment, I harken back to high school science where we were required to write up our experiments using a prescribed format.  Now this is bringing back bad memories as I passed chemistry by the skin of my teeth, and only due to the patience and competence of my lab partner Charmaine (who went on to be an RN I later heard).   But pushing qualms aside in the name of good scientific discipline:

Experiment Name:  Betsy’s Early Retirement

 Aim(s):

  1. To finish clean-up projects around the house that have been kicked down the road for too many years;
  2. To learn how to “do” retirement happily; and
  3. To discover rewarding activities that feed me physically, spiritually and emotionally (and perhaps financially).

Sub-Aim:

  1. To avoid driving my husband OR myself crazy, OR finding myself right back on the “busy” hamster (or guinea pig to keep the science imagery going) wheel doing pointless stupid activities that provide no satisfaction or compensation for my time, which would be even worse than my old job (at least I used to get paid)

Hypotheses:  By the end of the year, my lack of a specific or well-thought-out plan for retirement or any detectable notable skills or hobbies will propel me to:

  1. Get involved in one or more volunteer, non-profit or part-time work activities that will get me out of the house and provide social interaction and an outlet for my energy but provide enough flexibility to do trips and travel; OR
  2. Stumble across some presently unknown skill or hobby which will prove all-consuming and will lead me to become, for example, the next Barefoot Contessa (cooking) or Patty Sheehan (golf) or finally win the Valley Beautiful award for our house (gardening); OR
  3. Beg for my corporate job back after we spend all of our money and/or drive each other crazy.

Equipment:  I will be heavily relying on my support system: my husband, son, and therapist, our financial advisor, my friends, my church community, Rick Steves, the Laughing Chicks (you know who you are) and my Book Club.  I will also be tapping into our Wine Club stash as a resource.

Procedure:   I set up a short framework or  “To Do List” for myself this year that I intend to complete:

  1. Visit Paris for the first time with my husband (a life-long dream!)
  2. Clean out the garage and a storage shed (the much-deferred clean-up projects that will be painful and God-awful but liberating to complete)
  3.  Inventory my deceased parents’ belongings (in said garage and storage shed), work out with my brothers what to keep and what goes to who,  and get rid of the rest
  4. Pack up the parental items for my brothers in our new SUV and…..
  5. Do a Route 66 driving trip with my husband (another life-long dream) to deliver the goods (first stop…St Louis!)
  6. Determine what our next big trip will be and when
  7. Rest and recover from the corporate world!

Beyond that, I will go with the flow, open myself up to new experiences, not make any commitments for a year and purposely let things evolve.  Stay tuned for observations and results!   (Now you see why I wasn’t so good at Chemistry…..I usually had no earthly idea what was going to happen in our experiments.)

09.02.13
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A New Dawn – What I did My First Day of Retirement

In some ways, I had two “first” days of retirement.  My last day at work was a Thursday, so Friday was my first official day of retirement. I was happy to be free of my job and I wanted to do something special to commemorate the event.   Awhile back, I saw an ad campaign; I believe for Ameriprise Financial , that featured photos people took of the sunrise on their first day of retirement.  I thought that was pretty cool, so I filed the idea in the back of my head (the back of my head is a scary place) for “someday.”

A new dawn – sunrise on August 16, 2015, my first official day of retirement

When that “someday” actually came, I convinced my husband to go with me at sunrise to some hills overlooking the other side of our town facing east.  We researched the time of sunrise, scoped out the perfect spot for a photo, packed up a camera and tripod and then rolled out of bed at 0-dark thirty and drove to the spot.  And I didn’t even have a cup of coffee to fuel this insanity.

My fashion choice for the day was the the “Free At Last “T-Shirt I presented to my father before my wedding in 1988

For the special event, I chose to wear a t-shirt that read “Free At Last – Fathers Day 1988.”  This was a shirt that I gave my father (now deceased) the night before our wedding (which was a Fathers Day weekend).  He had been so proud of my career and me and, besides the event-appropriate freedom message, it was a meaningful way to include my parents in this celebration even though they are no longer here.

Of course, what we failed to take into account in our sunrise calculations was that the sun came up behind some peaks to the northeast, making sunrise about 30 minutes later at our particular spot.  That meant coming up with all sorts of novel ways to entertain ourselves on a road in the hills above town at dawn.  Luckily this was CA in summer so braving the elements was not a concern.  One diversion was taking practice pictures of me jumping for joy with the sunrise in the background…timing it just right for the camera shutter.  After doing about 20 of them I was exhausted, but I got a couple of shots that really made me laugh.

Synchronized jumping – should be considered at the next Senior Olympics!

After we got our shots, we went home and back to sleep.  Later I prepared for a girls weekend beach trip, so Friday ultimately felt more like the start of a 3-day weekend than the first day of retirement.

Monday was therefore, in my opinion, my real “first” day of retirement, and here was my agenda (all times are estimates since I quickly lost track of time):

  • 8:30 AM…Wake up
  • 9:00 AM…Check my calendar to see if there is anything on it (force of habit – there wasn’t)
  • 9:30 AM…Eat oatmeal (made by my husband) with my husband
  • 10:30 – 11:30 AM…Sort through stuff I brought home from office
  • 11:30 AM….Throw 90% of it away
  • Noon….Check Facebook and send email to my friends at work just to irritate them
  • 12:30  PM….Eat peanut butter & jelly sandwich I made myself (gold star)
  • 1:00 PM…Clean out my closet
  • 3:00 PM….Take a nap.

Note:  Around 4:00, I was going to start working on our itinerary for our upcoming Paris trip but my husband suggested we go for an early walk and then drink margaritas in the pool in the rafts with cup-holders that we recently discovered in our garage, which sounded like a much better use of my time.  Planned agenda aborted.

All in all, it was a surprisingly busy day “doing nothing.”   I did feel like I got some things accomplished.  There wasn’t the adrenaline rush of closing on a big new business deal, but a satisfaction in a  having the luxury to do one thing at a time at a slower pace and focus.  I always felt like I was juggling 30 balls in my job.

Post-script:  My husband made the margaritas a tad strong…so the day was ended with both of us passed out on the couch after watching the CBS evening news with Scott Pelley.  Three cheers for the old boring folks!

08.31.13
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Early Retirement

Reflecting on my last day in the office

Reflecting on my last day in the office

After a fairly intense 25-year corporate career, I recently opted for early retirement at age 55. On August 15, I turned in my BlackBerry, laptop, American Express, and security badge, packed up a few family pictures and files from my office, and walked out the door.   It felt like the weight of the world off my shoulders! I shocked more than a few people with my decision, as I was at the height of my career and earning potential and few could see me sitting at home doing nothing all day.  For crying out loud, I don’t even do the cooking, cleaning or laundry at home and we recently achieved empty-nester status with our son off to college in Annapolis.  My biggest hobby is reading People magazine when it appears in the mailbox each Friday, and reading a book a month for my book club.  Co-workers consistently asked me “So what will you DO, Betsy?!!”

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